Men of Courage II (9 page)

But that was where she headed anyway. She was shivering hard now, her teeth chattering. She just needed to sit out of the rain for a few minutes and gather her strength. Formulate a plan. Besides, she told herself, there must be something stable about that section of the barn. It had held up this long, hadn’t it?

It wasn’t much of a reassurance, but it was the best she could do for herself at the moment. Falling apart wasn’t an option. She was scared, she admitted it, but more than likely this would end up just being another interesting storm story to add to her repertoire. Only one she’d just as soon not relive or recount as she did the others.

One in particular came to mind. But she quickly squashed any temptation to allow her mind to stray in that particular direction. Thinking about Cooper Harrison wasn’t conducive to the clear-headed, rational mindset she needed at the moment. How in the hell she thought she was going to work anywhere in the vicinity of the man, she hadn’t a clue. But now was not the time to dwell on that problem, either.

She scraped her wet hair off her neck and wrung out as much of the water as she could. The melting hail pellets had created icy rivulets of water that were streaming down her back. She slipped off her backpack and
plucked her sodden shirt away from her skin. She was tempted to pull it off and wring it out, but dragging it back on again would probably just feel worse. And leaving it off wasn’t an option. It was wet, but it did provide some protection. Even if it was only in her mind.

There wasn’t much she could do about her mud-and-muck-splattered pants and she didn’t even want to consider what was caked into her shoes. She thought about taking them off and leaving them in the opposite corner. Or outside. But she had no idea what the next few hours would bring. And if she had to move quickly, she couldn’t afford to be shoeless. She walked back and scraped as much of the muck off as she could on the nearest rusted piece of metal equipment, then removed the rest by rubbing the soles and sides on the wet hay bale. At least she didn’t smell now, she thought, as she headed for the dry corner. If only drying her clothes were that simple.

Rubbing her arms, she crossed in front of one of the many missing planks…and stopped dead in her tracks. So did her heart.

In the far distance, probably a good mile or so away, the eerily dark sky was topped by a ceiling of dark clouds. But it was the four tiny funnels pulling down from that black cauldron that riveted her to the spot.

As she watched in dread, two funnels joined together, pulling farther down from the cloud ceiling to
ward the ground. Then the remaining three funnels became two. And as her heart kicked back in, thumping in double time, those two funnels become one.

I
T WAS CRAZY, REALLY
, to still be thinking about her like this. It had been six years and a lifetime ago since he’d seen Marty McKenna. Of course, she’d been naked at the time, and they’d just had sex in the back of his chase truck after witnessing the mother of all tornadoes. Something like that tended to burn certain indelible images into a man’s brain.

But now they were simply two professionals in the same field of study, colleagues whose paths had never managed to cross since that fateful day. He’d gone his way, she’d gone hers. It was a stupid waste of time wondering about the what-ifs and might-have-beens.
He’d tried telling himself that his recent preoccupation was completely normal, considering he was up for a promotion, and her name had surfaced as the leading candidate to fill the position he’d be vacating.

Except this wasn’t the first time he’d thought about what it had been like between them, both of them all charged up, sweaty and wild for each other. Her sweet naked body, writhing beneath him, shuddering around him.

Cooper Harrison jerked his thoughts back to the road. Christ, he really had to get a better grip. He’d be seeing her again in a mere couple of hours. And starting off their reunion with an obvious, throbbing hard-on wasn’t exactly going to set the professional tone he hoped for.

He hadn’t expected to deal with seeing her again for another six weeks, which was when she was slated to come in for her final interview before the board of directors. He’d told himself he’d be so swamped with his new duties by then, he’d be relieved to have anyone fill the vacancy on his crew. He’d told himself she’d probably long since forgotten all about him anyway. Not that that had helped any.

Then Ryan’s wedding invitation had arrived. And during a follow-up call to his old college buddy, Coop had found out that most of their old chase crew had been invited as well. Marty being one of them. Cooper
had had every intention of begging off. He’d just been offered the new director position at that point, and wasn’t sure about taking it. Truth be told, he still hadn’t completely reconciled himself to taking it.

When he’d heard that Marty would be attending, he’d rationalized that taking a few days’ vacation time to get away from work would help him come to terms with this new direction his professional life was taking. And that maybe it would be best to see Marty before she came to Oklahoma. That way they could clear up any potential hazards that might be better averted in a social situation, rather than a business setting.

Yeah. That was why he’d rearranged his entire life, taken vacation days for the first time in his five-year tenure at the National Severe Weather Center, and at the worst possible time, too. So he could attend the wedding of an old friend he hadn’t seen in years.

Cooper steered his truck through the steady traffic on Route 75, glad to be past Cincinnati, heading north again. He kept half an ear tuned to the chatter on his weather radio as he scanned the horizon ahead. The late June sky was a gorgeous clear blue, not a cloud in sight, but he knew that a massive severe weather system from Canada had moved in far more rapidly than they’d thought, and was currently targeting western Ohio. He’d been tracking it closely, along with another system shaking things up across the Texas panhandle, and
a third developing along the mid-Atlantic. To look at the national weather map, you’d never know tornado season was almost over.

His NSWC team back in Oklahoma had their hands full. He’d felt bad for leaving them like that, but it was just as well they got used to Cooper not being around. His tenure as team leader was due to expire at the end of the month. Which was how long he had to change his mind about accepting the job in the first place.

The green exit sign for Denton flashed overhead. The small southern Ohio town had already been hammered hard this spring. The residents were still dealing with the damage left behind by the sudden flooding from the most recent system that had torn through their small, bucolic township. In fact, listening to the news coverage, he’d been half expecting Ryan to call and tell him the wedding had been postponed.

Given that the groom had been on his storm chase crew longer than anyone back when they’d both been at Oklahoma University, Cooper should have known that as long as the church was still standing, the ceremony would go on as planned. Coop smiled, remembering the recognizable buzz in his friend’s voice when he’d called Ryan after the recent weather disturbance to make sure everyone was okay. These days Ryan was a forecaster for a local news affiliate out of Cincinnati, but they both knew that once chasing got in your blood, it never went away.

Staring out across the open pastures and small rural towns dotting his path north, he couldn’t deny the charge was still there in his blood. He still wanted to be the one out there. The one leading the hunt.

He, better than most, understood just how rapidly that blue sky out there could turn gray. Then a sickly green. Then a sudden roiling black—a cauldron of thick clouds, downdrafts and convection currents that could quickly combine to create creek-swelling downpours, hail the size of golf balls, winds capable of ripping the siding from houses, constant lightning strikes and, quite possibly, a twisting vortex that could flatten an entire town in less than sixty seconds.

He knew he was more fortunate than most, having carved a career out of studying severe weather in a field that was very narrow when it came to full-time, self-supporting work. He had no right to feel even a twinge of self-pity over giving up the hands-on work that had been his focus for so long. He’d gotten way more out of it than most. And he’d still be a contributor to his field of study. He just wouldn’t be in the field himself.

He ignored the sudden increase in chatter on his radio, letting it fade to white noise as his thoughts came full circle. Back to another late spring day, much like this one, the day that had ended up launching his career. The day that had put Marty McKenna in his path,
as volatile and unpredictable, it turned out, as the tornado they’d been lucky enough to record that day.

Graduation day. It hadn’t even been his graduation. It had been Marty’s. She’d just turned twenty-two, and was mere hours away from getting her hands on the diploma she’d worked so hard for. Coop had been a twenty-five-year-old grad student, far more interested in studying the mysterious and complex relationship between supercell thunderstorms and the formation of tornadoes than the similarly mysterious and complex relationships between men and women.

Not that he didn’t enjoy occasional personal time with the opposite sex, as long as it didn’t distract him for any length of time from what was most important to him: his research. He’d been so close to developing new diagnostic tools that would help demystify some of the many questions scientists had about tornado formation and development. He was certain he’d eventually get the attention his ideas deserved, that he’d be a force in his chosen field. Any serious, long-term relationship was out of the question for him, so he didn’t even consider it, an attitude that had admittedly narrowed his dating options dramatically.

Marty had been part of his chase crew that semester, having just transferred in from Kansas, specifically to work in his department. Smart, funny and a hard worker. That had been the total sum of his thoughts
about her at the time. Gender didn’t really matter much to him when it came to manning his crews. Functionality and dedication was what he looked for. But that fateful afternoon, what became a career-making event had turned, for a few short hours, into an unforgettable personal one. Marty McKenna was the only woman ever to cause his focus to veer so dramatically off course. Before or since. And where she was concerned, it had never fully gotten back on track.

While the rest of the campus had been in the throes of spontaneous bursts of celebration and general graduation chaos, Coop had been locked in the weather lab, tracking the mother of all storm systems. The way things were shaping up, it had looked like he had an excellent chance of seeing some major action. He had felt both excited and frustrated. Excited, because this supercell could provide him with a wealth of very timely data that would enable him to test and tweak some of his latest innovations. Frustrated because a chunk of his team had already graduated early, and the remainder of his crew was currently donning cap and gown, more interested in diplomas than twisters.

And then Marty had burst into the lab, breathlessly demanding to know if what she’d heard on the weather radio was accurate. She’d tossed her tasseled cap on the bench and peeled out of her robe. He remembered smiling at the discovery that instead of some fancy dress,
she’d worn jeans and a faded Butler County Girls Volleyball T-shirt beneath her gown. Maybe it was the act of seeing her strip that had drawn his attention to her body for the first time. Both her faded T-shirt and her jeans had been soft and snug, cupping a nicely rounded backside and pert breasts in a way he had no business noticing.

Coop flipped his turn signal and made the Denton exit, unable to keep from smiling as thoughts of that afternoon continued to play out in his mind. Apparently even the promise of the mother of all severe weather systems hadn’t been enough to completely stomp out his newly awakened libido. At the time, that had been irritating to him. He’d had far more important things to worry about than how soft Marty McKenna’s breasts would feel if he peeled both their shirts off and pulled her against his chest.

It was a good thing he hadn’t known then that Mother Nature intended to teach him several lessons that afternoon, or he’d have never let Marty McKenna inside his truck, no matter how desperate he’d been for a navigator.

“And what a perfect waste of a life-altering moment that would have been,” he said, his smile turning to a grin. Scientist or not, he was a man.

Just then the stream of radio chatter was interrupted by a string of warning beeps. A moment later his cell
phone rang. He tuned in the radio to listen to the weather alert even as he flipped open his phone. His pulse was already thrumming even before Ryan began rapidly talking in his ear.

“Where are you, Cooper?” Ryan demanded without preamble. “I mean, specifically.”

“I’m close, about an hour south of you,” Cooper told him, not questioning the abruptness of the call. “Why?” He struggled to listen to both Ryan and the weather alert at the same time. “What’s coming?”

“Front moved in faster from the south. Wind shear is awesome. There are multiple supercells, but the biggest is west of here, about twenty miles.”

“Moving?”

“South.”

“So you all are safe?”

“Not sure. It’s going to cut a wide swath. I’m calling because I just heard from Marty McKenna. She flew in from Kansas City, and since she couldn’t manage to book a nonstop flight, she had a layover in Detroit.”

Screwy flight plans had been partly the reason Cooper had chosen to drive up, rather than fly. That and the impending weather system had convinced him to keep his truck and gear with him.

Just in case.

“The airport had shut down from the northern sec
tor of this same weather system, so I told her to stay put.”

Despite the worry that was rapidly escalating, Cooper was smiling as he said, “I’m guessing she didn’t heed your request.”

Ryan snorted. “Should have saved my breath. She rented a car, reassured me she wouldn’t do anything stupid, and asked me the best route to take to circumvent the storm. It was moving east then, and we didn’t think the jet stream would meet up so early. So I sent her south.”

Cooper’s smile vanished. “You just told me—”

“I know,” Ryan said, sounding as upset as Cooper felt. “I sent her right into it.”

“Have you contacted her? She’s no fool, she’ll read the signs. I mean, she works for the NWS.”

“Yeah, but there’re only a few routes she can take out that way. It’s all rural. I’ve had the guys tracking for me and there’s hail, flooding, lightning strikes, trees and power lines down.”

“Have you contacted her?”

“I’ve been trying for hours. Cell service is spotty at best out there and right now, probably from the storms, it’s been nonexistent. But she managed to get through briefly just a few minutes ago. It was a really bad connection, but I got the gist of where she was. Then we got cut off and I haven’t been able to get her back.”

Ryan paused then, and in the silence that followed
a sick feeling began to pull at Cooper’s gut. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“She, uh, right before we got cut off, well, she was swearing, and it’s probably nothing but—”

“But what?” He’d heard Marty swear before. Of course, her nails had been tracking marks down his naked back at the time. He shook off the memory. “Did she say what was happening?”

“No. Like I said, the connection was horrible. But, Cooper, I think she screamed.”

Marty? Screaming? The woman he remembered was high octane when it came to getting things done, but not the type to be given to overreaction or dramatics. Now the adrenaline was kicking into overdrive. “Where did she say she was?”

“Route 192, just outside of Greenville.”

Horns blew as Cooper swiftly changed lanes and pulled to the side of the road. He had maps spread on the seat beside him a moment later. “Okay, I’ve got it. I can cut across 17 and be there in that area in about forty-five minutes.”

“Cooper—”

He heard the fear in his friend’s voice and intentionally lightened his own. “Hey, I know you’re jealous that I might get to see something interesting out there, but if I’m not mistaken, tonight is your wedding night, so I’m not feeling too sorry for you.”

There was a pause, then a sigh of relief. “Thanks. I don’t know how to tell you how much this means to all of us. Everyone else has made it in but you two, and we’re just really worried that she might be in some kind of trouble. I’d never forgive myself if—”

“Hey now, don’t go there. Marty might be hardheaded, but she can also take care of herself.” He knew that better than most. She’d proven what a capable woman she was when, on their way back to the university, not an hour after having been sweaty and naked with him deep inside her, she’d been all business. She’d been more concerned about what they’d seen and the impact it could have on his career than about what they’d just done with one another and the impact it might have on them personally.